


The Refractive Index

by NoStraightLine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, BAMF John, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, John responds accordingly, M/M, Oral Fixation, Porn with Feelings, bolt-hole, cross-dressing cocktease, let the rain come down, posh secret agent sex, sherlock is shot, symbols and single syllable words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-18
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-15 09:35:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoStraightLine/pseuds/NoStraightLine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Black Peter: "Holmes was working somewhere under one of the numerous disguises and names with which he concealed his own formidable identity. He had at least five small refuges in different parts of London, in which he was able to change his personality."</p><p>AKA: Five times John and Sherlock fuck in a bolt-hole, and one time they don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arduis Fidelis

**Author's Note:**

> Beta’d with a fucking scalpel, yo, by [Kres](http://archiveofourown.org/works/817556) . [JustGot1](http://justgot1.tumblr.com/) provided Arduis Fidelis (Faithful in Adversity, motto of the RAMC). Thank you!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re experiencing a fairly typical response to a near-death experience followed by skin-to-skin contact,” John says. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
> 
> Sherlock’s lashes dip, then his breath eddies against John’s temple. “Don’t embellish, John. I wasn’t near death, it’s not the typical response to me, and has everything to do with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW art by [JustGot1](http://justgot1.tumblr.com/post/53300940526/im-just-procrastinating-my-actual-paying-work-in) ! Thanks so much! ;)

_**Bromley.** _  
  
“He says you’re to come at once.”

Standing on the front step of 221 Baker Street is the half-frozen form of one of Sherlock’s homeless network. Under her filthy wool hat her nose is bright red, as are the whites of her eyes. Alcohol, John automatically surmises. It doesn’t take a hard-core drugs addiction to send someone to the streets. Vivienne, was it? Something with a V. He doesn’t ask, because Sherlock’s been gone for two days, and with her appearance John’s gone from mildly annoyed to petrified.

“Why hasn’t he texted? Where is he?”

She stares at him. “He says you’re to come at once, and bring his coat.”

The temperature hovers at minus ten so John pulls her inside and shuts the door. “Just…give me a minute. Stay right here.”

It takes considerably longer than a minute, because John has to put on layers. Long underwear, wool socks, a turtleneck, a jumper, a second jumper, his heaviest coat, watch cap, scarf, gloves, boots. His gun, tucked into his coat pocket for easy access. His guide is standing exactly where he left her in the foyer. John grabs Sherlock’s coat from the hooks by the door, and together they head out into the cold.

“Where is he?” John asks. He’s inhaling through his mouth, as the air is cold enough to freeze his nostrils.

She doesn’t answer, just ducks her head and keeps walking. There’s a lone cab on the street a few streets away. The driver’s headed home, but John throws every note in his wallet into the window and he agrees to take them despite the icy streets. Only when they’re inside the warm car does she give him directions.

The driver lets them out and they start to walk again. She finally stops by a bench on the edge of a park, and points. “He’s in there.”

“Where?” When Sherlock left the flat two days earlier, he’d been quite dapper in jeans, jumper, and a blazer, with gloves and the scarf for sartorial flair. No jacket, let alone a coat.

She just points. Carrying Sherlock’s coat, John sets off into the cold.

Just inside the park, Sherlock is huddled in the lee of a building. He stares at John like he has no idea who he is. “Jesus Christ,” John says, and slings the coat around Sherlock’s shoulders. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Waiting for you,” Sherlock says. His voice lacks its usual vibration, like the frigid air has numbed his vocal cords.

John looks at him. He’s been outside for less than ten minutes and his hands are stiffening. “How long have you been outside?”

“It’s just transport, John.”

Sherlock isn’t putting his arms through the coat’s sleeves, much less buttoning it. When John reaches for his arms, he moves like a puppet with poorly fitted joints. Gently John eases his arms into the coat and buttons it. “Your transport is in serious danger of hypothermia. Come on. I’m taking you home.”

“Home isn’t safe. That’s why I sent for you.”

John feels the back of his neck prickle. When Sherlock sends for John he normally won’t shut up, spilling details, deductions, needs, demands. John is, after all, a replacement for the skull. But Sherlock stays silent. Still. It’s the lack of shivering that triggers John’s command voice. “Fine. Not home. _Where?_ ”

“Bolt-holes.”

John’s sure he mis-heard him. He shifts his blue watch cap up to expose his ear and turns his head to Sherlock’s mouth. “What?”

“Bolt-hole. Change disguises. Disappear.”

John learned early on in the Army that comprehension wasn’t necessary for action. He grabs Sherlock’s arm and supports him while Sherlock leads them out of the park, then deep into a warren of alleys, then up a rusted fire escape behind an abandoned building. By the time they get there, John has to all but hoist Sherlock through the sixth-floor window. Inside is almost as cold as out. Creature comforts are few and far between: a chair, a fan, a tarp, a rack of clothes at the back of the room.

John bundles Sherlock into the warmest clothes he can find, but he ends up putting Sherlock’s jumper and blazer over a couple of summer-weight shirts, and his trousers over the shorts. His chalk-white skin is normally hot to the touch, but today it’s cold like a church statue. His hands fumble with buttons and zips until John shoves them aside and dresses him like he would a patient.

“This is piss poor planning, Sherlock.”

“I set — this up last — summer.”

When the temperatures were near thirty for weeks straight. “You never told me about these places.” John wraps another useless piece of clothing around Sherlock’s long feet.

“It — never came up.” At John’s disbelieving stare, he adds, “It’s dangerous. I didn’t — want to presume on — our partnership.”

John just shakes his head. He gives up on maintaining personal space and crowds in close to Sherlock to rub his arms and back. Even with friction, the extra layers, and his coat, Sherlock doesn’t stop shuddering. John yanks all the remaining clothes from their hangers and tosses them on the floor against the interior wall of the building.

“You’ve mild to moderate hypothermia, so you’re too cold to generate enough body heat,” John says. Then he strips Sherlock to his pants and socks, and drapes him in the coat. “I need to warm you up.”

John strips himself, pulls his knee-length parka back on, then rolls them both into the tarp with Sherlock’s back to the clothes and the only wall without a draught. The plastic will contain their body heat, but it’s the touch of John’s skin that makes Sherlock’s breath ease from him, half-sigh, half-groan.

“I’m going to put your hands between my — Sherlock, stop fighting me.” The tarp cocoon jerks and snaps as John tries to snug Sherlock’s hands tucked between his thighs. “Your hands are like ice. Do you want _the transport_ to lose fingers to frostbite?”

Sherlock stills, but doesn’t speak.

“Your arms are too long to tuck them in my armpits and keep you close,” John says a little more gently. “Stop fighting me.”

Sherlock tucks his hands between John’s thighs.

“Just keep them away from my bollocks, thanks very much. I’m going to put one hand between your legs and the other in your armpit. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

John ends up half on top of him, his chest to Sherlock’s, his pelvis pressed into Sherlock’s hip, keeping him as close as possible. John can feel Sherlock’s pulse against both of his hands and counts for several minutes, until he’s assured Sherlock’s heart is beating normally.

Sensing Sherlock’s carotid pulse with his lips is merely a consequence of their height difference and proximity. Fifty beats a minute, but Sherlock’s very fit.

The plastic tarp rustles with each of Sherlock’s tremors, but after an age, John can feel Sherlock’s skin warming. The tremors ease to occasional ripples, then Sherlock finally relaxes. But he doesn’t remove his hands from between John’s thighs. His head is bent forward, as if he wants to breathe in the warmer air between their bodies, and his eyes are closed. John studies the nape of his neck, so vulnerable and so rarely seen, and his cock thickens and shifts in his pants.

They’re both grown men. This is the body’s natural response to close quarters, to danger, to an unabashedly bisexual man pressed up against a…a…a Sherlock. He’s not going to make this into something it isn’t.

“What was the tarp for?” he asks.

“Shade.”

“Oh.”

Idle conversation isn’t helping. His cock is fully erect and pulsing with his elevated heart rate.

It’s nothing.

Ignore it.

Sherlock is.

But then…but then, there’s the unmistakable sensation of hot blood pulsing through Sherlock’s shaft against John’s hip. Both grown men. Natural response to close quarters, danger…and another man’s erection.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” John says, striving for his clinical voice. He’s the doctor. He’ll take the lead on this one. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Sherlock looks up. Their faces are so close John can see the striations in his pale eyes, the silver woven with the blue. Sherlock’s hand slides from between John’s thighs, then angles so his long fingers cup John’s balls and the heel of his hand presses against the head of John’s cock.

“Doesn’t it?”

John’s been offered gratitude fucks before, and never taken anyone up on it. But his body isn’t getting the honourable message humming in his brain, because he spreads his legs even as he says, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I know.” Low, amused, and the way Sherlock’s rubbing the sensitive patch behind John’s balls with his fingers is (mobility in extremities returning, a good sign) very distracting.

“You’re experiencing a fairly typical response to a near-death experience followed by skin-to-skin contact,” John says. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Sherlock’s lashes dip, then his breath eddies against John’s temple. “Don’t embellish, John. I wasn’t near death, it’s not the typical response to me, and has everything to do with you.”

John stares at him. John’s hand is still between Sherlock’s thighs. Sherlock’s femoral pulse kicks up, fluttering, anything but steady. His pupils are dilating, and the colour in his face isn’t just from John’s rewarming efforts. The attraction he thought was one-sided and worked hard to hide is clearly mutual, and John wonders how he missed it.

Oh, right. He missed it because Sherlock didn’t let him see it.

When Sherlock’s fingers slip further down to circle his hole through his pants, he stops thinking entirely, because he’s seeing it now. “We’re wearing too many clothes,” he says.

They strip to their skin. John takes a moment to examine Sherlock’s toes, but for once he wasn’t dressed for a City boardroom but rather in thick wool socks and boots. “Put your socks back on,” John says.

“Ruins the aesthetics,” Sherlock complains, but he obeys.

“I’ll leave mine on,” John offers.

“That’s worse,” Sherlock says, then rolls to his back. He watches John, eyes slightly narrowed. “You’ve done this before. In the army. Never with a subordinate, of course, and not since you returned to London. I’ve been…what’s the phrase? Cock-blocking you?”

John’s never been deduced by a mad genius lying naked (but for wool socks) and spread for him, but he could get used to it. He pulls Sherlock’s coat over his back and braces himself on knees and hands over Sherlock. Heat simmers between their bodies, but practicalities come first. “I don’t have a condom.”

One eyebrow lifts. “What happened to _Semper Paratus_?”

“You have _Arduis Fidelis_ instead, and before you complain, the RAMC just saved your life. I had clean test results in November. You?”

“Tested clean just before you moved in. Celibate since. Get on with it.”

“I also don’t have any slick.”

Sherlock traces John’s lip with his index finger, his gaze following it like he’s thinking about John’s mouth around his cock. “You have Vaseline,” he says quietly. “It’ll do.”

John thinks about the many, many times he’s moisturized his lips against the cold or wind, about what Sherlock observed, about what John didn’t.

The Vaseline does very well. John takes his time, uses the grease to soften the skin, then opens Sherlock one finger at a time. When he presses home, the deep groan that rumbles from Sherlock’s chest lights up every nerve in John’s body.

“Good?” he asks. His voice is nearly inaudible despite the silence, but Sherlock opens his eyes and nods.

For a split second John looks down at him and wonders what else he hasn’t been permitted to see, but the tight, slick heat quickly ends all thinking, and in a matter of moments he’s building to a steady rhythm. He watches the sex flush bloom on Sherlock’s throat, then his chest, thinks about vasodilation bringing blood to the surface of the skin, about Sherlock’s heart pumping to circulate all that hot blood through his cold body. It’s meant to distract him before this ends too quickly, but it backfires. John’s brought him back to health, and made his eyelids flutter wildly with each carefully aimed thrust, satisfying on so many visceral levels. When Sherlock tips his head back, exposing his throat as he groans, all medical knowledge evaporates from John’s head. He curls his toes into the floor, grips Sherlock’s hip and shoves forward, grunting with the effort. Sherlock gives a strangled cry and works his hand between their bodies to squeeze his cock. The rough rub of knuckles against John’s belly nearly ends him. He tenses against it, but when Sherlock comes with one hand braced against the wall behind him, John surrenders.

Too fast. John wants to do that again, in a proper bed in a heated flat without the threat of death or destruction hanging over their heads, but if he’s learned anything in the months he’s lived with Sherlock, it’s not to make plans. “Feel safe to presume on our partnership now?” John asks, trying to sound light-hearted.

“Yes, unless the kind of partnership you mean includes a ring and an announcement in the Sunday _Times_ ,” Sherlock says, amused.

John considers this as he picks through the piled clothing for something suitably ugly to ruin with clean-up. “Where are the other bolt holes?”

“Kensington, Chelsea, Westminster, Harrow,” Sherlock rattles off.

“Sod the announcement,” John says, and pulls out. “We christen the other four and call it good.”

One corner of Sherlock’s mouth lifts, as if he hadn’t considered this benefit. “My bed in Baker Street?”

John likes the sound of that. He hands Sherlock the soiled shirt, clean side down and ready to use. “And mine.”

“Yours is too small,” Sherlock says as he wipes his stomach.

“It’ll feel left out,” John says. “It’s only fair.”

“If we’re factoring in the emotions of inanimate objects we don’t own, let’s not forget the settee or the shower or the kitchen table.”

“We’ll have to move the microscope.”

“No, no,” Sherlock says, mock-serious. “It wants to watch.”

John snorts. “To think people call you an unfeeling machine.”

“Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson,” Sherlock muses in that whiskey voice.

Put that way, it’s a new phase in their relationship, but John’s not going to make much of this. Sherlock discards toys as rapidly as he buys them. “It has a nice ring to it,” John says, then catches Sherlock’s eye. “That kind of ring suits me just fine.”


	2. What's A Pretty Girl Like You...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Blow job or fuck. You pick,” John says.  
> “Neither,” says the Sloane in front of him. “I’m much too busy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “My dear child, what do you take me for? As soon as I realized what she was about, I nipped around the corner to change my persona.” To one of his bolt-holes, I interpreted, those scattered and invisible hideaways that served as combined retreats and dressing rooms. (A Letter of Mary by Laurie R. King, pg 142)
> 
> Beta’d by [Kres](http://archiveofourown.org/works/817556) and [JustGot1](http://justgot1.tumblr.com/), both of whom let me say “cross-dressing cocktease” rather a lot, and didn’t suggest I should be sectioned. 
> 
> Trigger-ish warning: my BAMF!John might be your dub-con. This is a consensual encounter between two partners who play very, very nicely together. Shall we begin?
> 
> ETA: Link to [NSFW art](http://justgot1.tumblr.com/post/53441347892/cheeky-knickers-i-drew-this-one-days-ago-but-i) by JustGot1. Blokes in knickers. Go on, then. Have a click.

_**Kensington.** _

Harrods. Come at once. - SH

The directions in the following text are elaborate enough to test John’s Army-trained navigational skills, involving two back rooms, a staircase painted in colours popular in the seventies, another back room containing clothes from the fifties, and a state-of-the-art electronic lock on a door that opens into a stuffed storage room. Behind the musty, beaded flapper dresses, bowler hats, feather boas, pink flamingos, and dressmaker’s mannequins is another door. John knocks softly, then turns the knob.

“You didn’t lock — oh, excuse me, miss,” he says and starts to back out the door, when the details converge in his brain. The room looks like a bomb went off in a theatre’s costume department. Clothes of every style and fabric, makeup, hair accessories, wigs, putty for shaping jaw and cheek. And in the middle of it all stands six foot tall Sherlock Holmes, dressed like runway model for a jeans company.

He turns to look at John. “Close the door.”

John obeys and starts with the obvious. “Why are you trying on women’s clothes?”

“I couldn’t very well try them on in the shops,” Sherlock says.

“But you bought them?”

“Posed as an actress’s beleaguered personal assistant. They were very helpful once I promised tickets to an exclusive premier party.”

“Do you have tickets?”

“No.”

“Which actress’s reputation did you just malign?”

“Nicole Kidman.”

“Sherlock, she lives in Australia.”

“Why is your brain full of such useless information?”

“I watch telly. Nicole Kidman?”

“We’re the same height,” Sherlock says, turning to peer over his shoulder at his backside, reflected in the mirror. “I could do with a trained female assistant.”

He looks at John, who holds his hands up. “I’m still working at the clinic. If I get caught dressed in women’s clothes and conducting surveillance, I’m out of a job and the laughingstock of London.”

Sherlock’s gaze flicks over him. “You are also, despite your height, unquestionably male. Whereas I, despite my height, get away with this quite regularly.”

“You do?” He thought he knew Sherlock, but perhaps he doesn’t know him at all.

“Theatre group at Oxford,” Sherlock says, then goes back to studying his arse. “Never lost the taste for it. Women do this,” he says. How he knows that is beyond John. “It’s the first thing they do when they try on a new pair of jeans or trousers. Why? Is the appearance of the buttocks more important than comfort or tailoring?” He catches John’s eye in the mirror. “What do you think?”

“Of what?”

“My arse in these jeans.”

John gives up on making this make sense. “Nice. Very nice.”

Sherlock swipes a pile of shoe boxes off a stool and drags it by the mirror. He pats it. “Have a seat, John, and help me get into character. You can play bored boyfriend while I try all this on.”

John sits down. Hands on his hips, Sherlock studies himself in the mirror, critically eyeing the ruffled V-neck blouse he’s wearing.

“You can’t do sleeveless,” John says. “Your shoulder musculature is distinctly masculine.”

“The frippery is good, though,” Sherlock says. “A visible cue to feminine goes a long way.”

“Earrings? Something dangly?”

“Draws attention to the length of my jaw.”

“What do you do about stubble?”

“Depilatory cream.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Try that blouse,” John says, pointing to a silky silver top at the far end of the rack. When Sherlock pulls the ruffled V-neck over his head, John’s jaw drops.

“You’re wearing a bra.”

“Fabrics this season are very sheer, and people expect straps. It’s padded, although with my build, women are generally small-breasted. Still, the little cues create context.”

He pulls the grey blouse over his head, and suddenly the context meshes: stereotypical Sloane, from the heels to the jeans to the blouse. When he looks at John, his face changes. His chin lifts, his shoulders shift, and his eyes take on a wash of entitlement. He shifts his hips, drawing John’s eye to the thin belt through the loops in the waistband of the low-slung jeans. It’s perfect. Sherlock has a body that begs for couture clothing. Men’s or women’s doesn’t seem to matter. It’s the length of his legs, his slender torso, the Oxbridge accent, the utter confidence with which he carries himself.

“I want to fuck you,” John says. It’s a typically male response to a pretty woman, and Sherlock did say he wanted to get into character.

“Really, John.” With a switch of his hips John recognizes from every woman he’s ever dated who said _no_ but meant _talk me into it_ , Sherlock turns his back to the mirror again. “I have so many more things to try on.”

The role’s taking shape, and John’s willing to see where this goes. “By all means,” he says. Legs spread, he slumps on the stool and crosses his arms.

Sherlock takes off the blouse and hangs it on the keeper rack. Even the way he handles the belt is calculatedly feminine. He doesn’t jerk back the end to release the prong, but rather caresses the leather, sliding it free, using his hands to full advantage. Then he hooks his thumbs in the waistband and slides the denim down with the wiggle women do to take off tight jeans.

He’s wearing women’s underwear. His cock is tilted to one side, hardening towards his hipbone and when he turns again to hang up the jeans, the twilight silk trimmed in grey lace reveals the curves of his arse.

John’s mouth goes dry.

Sherlock turns and looks over his shoulder at John. The move is so shockingly coquettish, so flirtatious, so unlike Sherlock and yet totally like him that John would laugh if he weren’t so turned on. Fuck the Kinsey scale. He’s Sherlock-sexual, and suddenly, desperately hard.

“Cheeky knickers,” Sherlock says.

“They certainly are,” John says, but it comes out garbled because he’s gone from dry-mouthed to salivating in a split second.

“No, that’s the correct term for this style. Cheeky knickers. I didn’t fully understand until I tried them on. The woman at Agent Provocateur recommended them.”

“You bought knickers at Agent Provocateur.”

“For Nicole, of course.” Sherlock flips through a selection of jeans. “She has exquisite taste.”

“Is she paying for all of this?” John asks, because he’s bought gifts for girlfriends there, then eaten packaged noodles for a week to make up for the hole in his budget. The sex was worth it, though.

“Mycroft is.”

“Your brother…” John can’t finish that sentence while Sherlock’s pert, muscled, silk-and-lace-covered (barely) arse is right in front of his face.

“If he wants me to tail the wives and daughters of foreign nationals on tedious shopping trips, he’s going to have to pay for the wardrobe.” Sherlock shakes out another pair of jeans. “7 for All Mankind.”

And the conversation takes another sharp left into incomprehensible. “Doomsday cult?”

“The jeans. 7 for All Mankind. Very trendy at the moment.”

John blinks to be sure he’s correctly reading the price tag dangling from a belt loop.“They’re a hundred and fifty quid.”

Again with the wriggle, then Sherlock zips the fly. Another spin, and perusal of his arse. “Better than the Rag and Bone?”

“Sherlock, I know you’re talking because your mouth is moving and I hear your voice but honest to God, you could be speaking Mandarin for all I know. Or care.” John frowns. “What do you do about your voice?”

“Hmmmmm?” Sherlock says.

It’s sexy and raspy and breathy, like a cigarette-smoking pinup girl from a noir film, and somehow completely authentic to the figure before him. Sherlock’s got his hands tucked in the back pockets of the insanely expensive jeans, a silky top shifting and sliding against his torso, his head bent as he peers at John through mascaraed lashes and bites his lower lip.

Today the role of Sherlock Holmes will be played by a cross-dressing cocktease. John has now officially seen it all.

“Blow job or fuck. You pick,” John says.

“Neither,” says the Sloane in front of him. “I’m much too busy.”

“If we fuck, you’ll have to take those heels off because there’s no way I’ll get my cock up your arse with the additional height disparity.”

“No.”

John gets off the stool and takes two steps to stand in front of Sherlock. He slides his hands along his hips and under the top to trail his index fingers along the waistband of the jeans.

“Not now, John.” The smoky voice trickles along John’s nerves as Sherlock goes back to sliding hangers along the rolling rack of clothes.

“Now,” John says.

“I’ve ever so many more things to try on, and then I’ve a reservation at — “

John spins Sherlock away from the rack. Sherlock stumbles back into the wall but then flattens his hands like he needs palms against plaster to keep him upright. It’s perfectly in character, right down to the provocative smile that flirts with his mouth. “That’s the thing about heels,” John says conversationally. “They shift your centre of gravity. It’s hard to walk, much less run. Down you go.”

John pushes; Sherlock folds at the knees to slide down the wall, so he’s sitting on his heels, legs spread to either side of John’s, his face at exactly the right height. John braces his forearm against the plaster and opens belt and flies with the other. Sherlock’s lip gloss gleams in the light, and he gives John another heated glance as he touches the tip of his tongue to his lower lip.

“Open,” John says.

Sherlock licks around John’s furling foreskin. Between the incendiary glances, the not-quite-right pressure of his tongue, and the tension simmering in the room, John’s going to keep working it. “A mouth like that? I know you can do better.”

Sherlock closes his perfect, heart-shaped lips around John’s cock and swallows him down to the root. John’s eyelids flutter closed. “Nice,” he says.

John fully intends to be a gentleman about this, but Sherlock teases and teases, not enough pressure, not deep enough, until John fists his hand in Sherlock’s hair. One slow pull and Sherlock groans around his cock. John sinks through the vibrations to the back of Sherlock’s throat. Sherlock swallows around him.

“God, that’s the trick,” John moans. “Again.”

He takes what he wants until his orgasm hits him like a train. He retains enough sense to avoid choking Sherlock, but that’s about it. When he comes to, Sherlock’s keening with frustration as he tries to wrestle the skin-tight jeans low enough to release his cock and get a hand on himself.

“Shhh,” John says as he drops to his knees. “I’ve got you.”

Sherlock widens his knees. It’s the first time John’s given a hand job to a bloke in tight jeans and heels, but life with Sherlock promises to be full of firsts. Ten quick, rough strokes and Sherlock yanks the silk top up and lets his head drop back against the wall. Semen pulses over John’s fist, staining the jeans and knickers.

“Now I’ll have to keep these,” Sherlock says, eyes still closed, corner of his mouth quirked up. “I preferred the Rag and Bone fit.”

John’s gratified to hear his voice back. “Mycroft’s paying. Keep both.”

“I really must be at Dabbous in twenty minutes.”

John helps him to his feet. They clean up, then John watches Sherlock reapply eyeliner and mascara, then lip gloss. He settles a sleek dark wig over his curls and gives it a shake to skim his cheekbones.

“Christ. Your mouth’s perfect now,” John says. “All the models look like that, like they’ve been sucking cock right before walking down the runway.”

“Trying to make yourself indispensable?” Sherlock says. He swipes another coat of gloss along his lower lip, then uses the edge of his little finger to tidy it up before dropping the tube in a small clutch.

“Doing my duty for Queen and country." John squares up and opens the door. “Get you a cab, miss?”

“And people complain chivalry is dead,” Sherlock says, and sweeps out of the room.


	3. Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did you just offer an opium derivative to a drug addict?”  
> “Did you just get shot in the head?”

_**Chelsea.** _  
  
Come at once. Bring gun. - SH  
  
John arrives in the empty office building just in time to see a shaking, cursing man aim a pistol at Sherlock. “Sherlock! _Down!_ ”

At the sound of John's voice, the man spins, the gun goes off, and blood sprays into the air. John shoots the gunman, whose body thuds to the ground at the same time as Sherlock’s. John sprints down the row of low-walled cubes. “Jesus, _please_ , God, no, _please_ ,” he whispers as he drops to his knees at Sherlock’s side.

“I’m fine, John,” Sherlock says, but his voice is trembling and blood drips from his ear.

“You are not fine, you fucking idiot. You’ve been shot!”

John combs frantically through Sherlock’s hair. A crease. He can’t see bone, although it’s difficult to tell in the dark. Sirens wail in the distance.

“We must leave,” Sherlock says. “There’s a dead man on the floor, and Lestrade will add up him, the cabbie, and you to get four.”

“Life in prison, more like,” John says. He wedges his shoulder under Sherlock’s arm and helps him stagger to his feet. “Where?”

They end up at the bolt-hole in Chaplins Chelsea Harbour. It’s another hidden storage room. Department stores work a treat for bolt-holes, filled as they are with discards going back decades, and high turnover among staff. Sherlock clutches John’s handkerchief to his head while John enters the ten-digit code that unlocks the door.

“Sit down,” John orders. Sherlock all but folds onto a low stool.

The bullet gouged a path in skin and hair along the top of his head. Half an inch lower and Anderson would have been scraping Sherlock’s brain off the wall of the office.

John won’t think about that. Instead, he reaches under a table for the combat medic kit he stored here weeks ago.

“Wipe your fingers,” Sherlock mutters. “Powder burns.”

“I’ve done this before, Sherlock.”

Sherlock tips his head forward and rests it on John’s abdomen. “What’s it like?”

John gently parts the blood-soaked strands of hair to trace the path the bullet took along Sherlock’s skull. The question is scarily non-specific for Sherlock. Being utterly obsessed with a mad genius? Hiding away in a room that doesn’t exist on any floor plan or building plan or map? Sewing up a bullet wound? Seeing your lover on his knees from pain and shock, blood coagulating on the side of his face? Sherlock’s going to have to be more specific, and keeping him talking through this is a good idea. John can gauge his mental acuity.

“What’s what like?” John says conversationally.

“Getting shot.” Sherlock winces as John injects lidocaine to numb the surrounding skin. “Properly shot.”

There’s the violation, the agony, then weeks and weeks of pain and rehab. The daily reminders of the lack of wholeness. The shit-yourself fear you’re going to die without ever having loved. “You’re never going to know,” John says matter-of-factly, and snugs the first stitch tight.

“I’m sorry you do.”

John shrugs as he continues to close the wound. “It happens in war zones.”

“It’s going to scar.”

“Have a little faith in your battle-tested Army doctor, but yep. Fortunately you’ve got masses of hair so you won’t look like Frankenstein. You vain git.”

“You came,” Sherlock says. “Like the cavalry.”

“I have morphine, if you need it.” John added it to the field kit now stocked in every bolt-hole.

Sherlock’s breath huffs against John’s abdomen. “Did you just offer an opium derivative to a drug addict?”

“Did you just get shot in the head?” John retorts.

“I did.”

“You certainly did, you utter prat.”

“Your bedside manner could use some work, John.”

John doesn’t put the syringe back in the kit. “That’s going to hurt like bloody blue hell, in a while.”

“Paracetamol.”

John shakes out the tablets. Sherlock swallows them dry. John helps Sherlock to the long sofa, where he stretches out on his back. John braces himself on his side next to him.

“I want to be on the inside,” Sherlock complains. He’s skin over muscle and bone and John isn’t fat, but the settee was built for sitting, not sprawling.

“And I want to be facing the door.” John pulls his gun from the back of his jeans as he speaks. He lays the weapon on Sherlock’s abdomen, then closes his hand around Sherlock’s hip and drapes his leg across his thigh to secure him. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, and I won’t let you fall.”

Sherlock’s eyes close. John watches him breathe. The man is faceted like an expensive crystal glass. Through it the eye sees a red liquid that could be claret or sherry or wine or blood, and holding it up to the light only blinds the observer with the prisms.

“What’s your pain level?” John asks after a while.

“I took the pills, right?”

John stiffens with alarm. Concussion, bruised brain, bleeding on the brain, oh holy god, and he can’t take him to A&E — .

“Joking, John. It hurts like bloody blue hell.”

He considers saying _I’m sorry_ but instead opts for, “It’s your own fault, you total wanker.”

“I know. A youth misspent on a heroin addiction and I’m off the opiate analgesics.”

“Should have thought that through, you spectacular imbecile.”

“I did think it through. I wasn’t going to live past twenty-five so it didn’t matter.”

John’s throat closes. Sherlock talks about dying, about wanting to die, so casually it breaks John’s heart. But tonight the role of Sherlock Holmes is being played by a man whose mortality gouged a trail through hair and skin, casting John in the role of guide and protector. Again.

“You did, so the next time I scream to get down because a drug-crazed embezzler’s aiming a gun at you, fucking get down,” John scolds. “You deaf bastard.”

“Bedside manner, John. I’ll hit the floor. I promise.”

Under John’s forearm, Sherlock’s cock stirs in his trousers. The room smells like blood and dust, a scent that reminds John of Afghanistan and graves, a scent he wants eradicated from his mind by something even more primitive. Gently, so Sherlock can say no if he likes, John presses his forearm into Sherlock’s shaft.

“I did just get shot in the head,” Sherlock says.

“The thought turns you on?”

Sherlock’s thick, dark eyelashes flicker against his cheek. “No, but kneeling at your feet with your hands in my hair does. Lying next to you with your hand on my hip does. Your gun on my chest does.”

John looks at the Sig. He will empty the fucking clip into anyone who comes through that door with intent to harm. As he’s all but crouched and snarling over Sherlock’s body, he suspects that testosterone is seeping from his pores, right into Sherlock’s back brain. “You’re mental. Getting shot in the head couldn’t possibly make you any more mental.”

Sherlock hums, low and velvety. “I know. Take my mind off it. Endorphins dull pain, yes?”

“They do. You have to stay still,” John says. “You have to stay very, very still.”

And he does. John would keep him safe like this, silent and quiet and safe and still, until they both died of extreme old age, but it’s impossible. They’d die of boredom first. So they’ll pretend. They’ll pretend Sherlock won’t walk into another bullet, or a knife, or a length of pipe. They’ll pretend John won’t follow him to save him, or die with him. They’ll pretend their lives will be safe and sane and normal. The very epitome of boring and dull. Sherlock will lie still and pretend that John immobilizes him, and John will pretend he’s not scared to death and loving it, that he wants his life any other way.

It doesn’t take long. John spits in his palm until Sherlock’s pre-come eases his way. He’s gentle and slow, not jerking or tugging, building endorphins and desire as he coaxes Sherlock’s orgasm up his shaft, whispers endearments _you sexy bastard you gorgeous creature you glorious thing_ into Sherlock’s ear, and tightens his leg when Sherlock stiffens and shudders into release.

“Go on, then,” Sherlock murmurs, and tugs his blood-soaked shirt up a little higher.

“The shirt’s already ruined,” John points out.

“Want to feel it on my skin.”

 _Jesus._ John wrestles his cock free. His hand is wet with Sherlock’s semen, and the thought of mingled fluids on Sherlock’s flat stomach is all his fight-or-fuck-saturated brain needs. Sherlock hums with satisfaction when John’s come hits him, then trails his fingers through their semen while John trembles.

John uses the towel to clean up, then tucks everything away. It’s a bit tricky using only one hand, but he’s relaxed now and the room smells less like a battlefield grave and more like come and sweat and all the promises of life.

He peers down at Sherlock’s bloodied face. “You…you….” John can’t find the right word.

“Yours,” Sherlock says. In all this time he hasn’t opened his eyes, but he does now. His pupils are both the same size and appropriate to the low light, but that’s not what matters right now. The intensity in his eyes is what matters. “That’s what you mean, you inarticulate idiot. Yours.”

“Yeah,” John says. It’s not quite right, but for now, it will do. And it doesn’t matter. Sherlock won’t acknowledge any of this tomorrow. John rests his hand on the Sig and lets his head drop onto Sherlock’s shoulder. “Mine.”


	4. 00Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he comes back into his body, John swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He’s drooled a little. He’s not dead. He’s drenched in sweat, shaking from head to toe, and not sure of his own name.

_**Westminster.**_  
  
Royal Opera House. Come at once. Black tie. - SH  
  
When John arrives at Covent Garden, Sherlock is pacing a path in the carpet by a doorway marked Staff and muttering to himself. “Emeralds,” John hears as he closes the distance between them. “Last seen in a vault in the City. Impossible to sell given their historic context and prior owners. More likely to trade for art, then for — oh, you’re here. Come on, John,” he says. “I need to stay out of sight.”

“You have a bolt-hole in the Royal Opera House.”

“Found it, actually,” Sherlock says as he leads the way down winding flights of stairs into a sub-sub-basement. He opens a door into a small room furnished with a Turkish rug, a leather chair that could have been lifted from Mycroft’s club, a shelf of old books, and racks of moth-eaten clothes. “They’re my size, beautifully tailored, but in total disrepair. There’s a pipe, too, which I’ll appropriate, because I have ninety minutes to solve this case and I need to think.”

“Who’s Vernet?” John asks, but he’s distracted from perusing the art on the walls when Sherlock lifts the pipe from the round table beside the chair and taps it against the table. Crumbled bits of tobacco fall onto the dusty wood.

“You’re not smoking,” John says.

They grapple for the pipe. John wins, because he might be smaller, but he’s better trained and philosophically opposed to smoking in any form.

“Did you bring patches?” Sherlock says, irritated. “I told you to bring patches.”

John rubs his forehead. “We’ve been over this, Sherlock. I can’t hear you talking if we’re not in the same room.”

Sherlock groans, and tries to pace, but his long legs cover the space in less than two strides. It’s working him up, not settling him down. “I can't think.”

“So we’ll go home for patches,” John says. “No one’s shooting at us, for a change.”

“I can’t leave. The jewels are somewhere in the opera house, and the thieves will make their escape before the show ends. I’ve almost got it. It’s right there, within reach, but I can’t…” He clenches his fists and raps his knuckles against his temples. “I…just…need…to think!”

He slaps the wall with each abbreviated stride, growing more and more frantic as he whirls, until John reaches out, grabs him by the cummerbund, and hauls him in. “I didn’t stitch up that head for you to knock bruises into it. Sit down and talk me through it.”

“Talk you through it?” Sherlock says incredulously.

“Yes. Talk. Something to do with your mouth that will — .” Sherlock backs John against the wall. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Shut up. You forgot the patches,” he snaps as he works John’s wool trousers open. They drop to the floor at the same time Sherlock does.

John’s eyes roll back in his head. “I’m going to forget the patches more often.”

Sherlock’s licking around John’s foreskin so he doesn’t respond with anything more cutting than the slide of his teeth against John’s shaft. He pulls off to work teeth and tongue against John’s hip bones, then his thighs, then his balls, teasing, teasing until John cards his fingers through Sherlock’s hair.

“Sherlock.”

“Many, many ways to satisfy an oral fixation,” Sherlock growls into John’s testicles.

The low rumble makes John quiver. Sherlock licks the base of his cock, nuzzles into the shaft but avoids the foreskin and head. John tightens his fingers at the damp roots of Sherlock’s hair and not-so-gently tugs his head back.

“You can’t come.” He’s looking up at John while he speaks, his mouth pouty and wet. The bastard.

“Why the fuck not?” John demands. His head lolls back against the wall, basic functions like muscle control and skeletal integrity slipping south with his blood.

“Because this is helping me think, and your refractory period is sadly measured in hours, not minutes.”

John lifts his head. “I’m forty-one years old!”

“No, John. I need to keep doing this.” A flash of pewter in Sherlock’s gaze, muted by dark lashes. “It’s helping.”

Sherlock’s teasing him, John thinks. Probably. Maybe. He’s the only one who sees this facet of Sherlock. It’s locked away when almost everyone else is in the room, except perhaps Mrs Hudson. John needs him. Sherlock needs the work. John conducts light so Sherlock can work.  

Normally John doesn’t mind coming in second, but he’s being driven out of said mind. His cock leaves a smear of pre-come on Sherlock’s cheek as Sherlock once again licks along the shaft. The first build subsides, then builds to a second peak before Sherlock backs off to lick and nibble. The third wrecks John.

“Sherlock. Sherlock, stop!”

There’s a low, delighted laugh that ends when John shoves Sherlock back and stumbles to the middle of the rug. He’s never been driven to this point before, where there’s so much sensation inside his skin that he can’t bear the touch of fine wool and smooth cotton on the outside. Even the brush of air on his cock is too much. He has to strip. He has to be naked. He jerks free from what’s left of his evening suit, then sprawls on the ancient Turkish rug and spreads his thighs.

Sherlock shucks his dinner jacket and crawls between John’s legs. “There’s a manual component to smoking. Perhaps I should finger you,” he says, peering up at John through thick lashes and his overlong fringe.

“Oh, Christ,” John groans as Sherlock rummages in his pockets for the Vaseline. John now carries it for situations like this as well as protection against the elements. Sherlock’s fingertip slips between his buttocks. “Not. Helping. Oh, fuck. Do it.”

Slow, light pressure on his prostate and his cock’s jerking like it’s been hooked up to a circuit, which it has — the circuit connecting Sherlock’s mouth to John’s back brain. The pleasure deepens, sends tendrils into his muscles and bones.

Sherlock’s still thinking, his tongue and teeth working over John’s cock with a careless inattention that shouldn’t be so bloody hot. John shudders and writhes until Sherlock lets him go with a filthy wet pop. “I’m going to kiss you. Don’t come.”

“God, yes,” John mutters, but the _s_ hisses into Sherlock’s mouth as he lunges for John with all the finesse of a teenager. Their teeth clack, blood blooms in John’s mouth, but he doesn’t care, he just doesn’t fucking care. He fists his hand in Sherlock’s hair and tugs until Sherlock lightens both pressure and depth, his tongue less marauding and more storming, and then John really doesn’t care because Sherlock’s shoving down his trousers. The kissing continues as they try to get Sherlock undressed without any visual directions from their brains, because right now it’s all about Sherlock’s gorgeous, sexy, sinful mouth.

Sherlock straddles his hips, squeezes more Vaseline onto his fingertips, then he leans down to kiss John while he reaches between his legs. John’s hand drifts south to rub the edges of Sherlock’s opening while Sherlock works one finger inside. John’s finger nudges Sherlock’s, then slides into his arse as well. Sherlock’s groan comes from so deep in his body John can feel it begin near his hips, and when it rumbles into John’s open mouth, he can taste it, dark and honey-thick.

They’ve got a rhythm with their fingers, sliding in, hooked together to stretch Sherlock, and if this isn’t the hottest thing John’s ever done, he doesn’t know what is. His neck aches with the effort of looking between their bodies to watch. Finally Sherlock bats his hand away. John’s head thuds hard against the floor, then his neck arches as Sherlock works himself down on John’s cock.

“Oh, _Christ_.”

“Don’t come,” Sherlock growls. “Fuck me, but don’t come.”

“I’m not a fucking saint, Sherlock!” His bollocks are so tight against his body he’s sure he’s lost circulation there. It’s too much, so much, _too much_ , and each rocking drop of Sherlock’s hips is hitting a bass drum inside John, percussive beats thudding up through his torso. It’s like his entire nervous system is lit up, glowing inside his skin.

“Don’t…fucking…come.”

John’s last coherent thought is that tonight the role of Sherlock Holmes will be played by a posh secret agent with an oral fixation, with John the object of his craving. He just hopes he doesn’t die to increase the dramatic tension.

Sherlock braces himself on his elbows and kisses John like the only air John’s going to get will come from Sherlock’s lungs. John grips his hips and thrusts up. The pressure is hot and sharp, the angle tipping Sherlock forward and shallowing John’s entry into his body, a mechanics problem John fixes by digging his heels into the carpet, wrapping his arms around Sherlock’s waist and shamelessly fucking up into the tight heat above him.  

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock gasps. The movement shoves his cock back and forth between their bodies.

John clings to Sherlock, snapping his hips with every ounce of strength he possesses, growling with a combination of desperation and demand, almost there, _almost there_ , when he realizes what had been a three-part harmony of grunts, groans, and bodies slapping has lost the baritone, leaving the tenor alone on stage. He opens his eyes.

Sherlock’s frozen, head lifted, eyes flickering back and forth.

Oh, Christ. Oh fucking Christ. He knows where the emeralds are. John is aching and desperate and thirty seconds away from a spectacular orgasm. He’s been sucked to the point of tears three times, and ridden into seeing stars. His orgasm’s going to send him spinning off into the void like a goddamn Frisbee, and fuck, fuck, _fuckityfuckfuck_ , Sherlock’s about to jump to his feet, yank up his pants and trousers, and dash back into the fray. Because the work comes first.

John forces his arms to relax, but then Sherlock looks down and kisses him again. He does a little shimmy-snap-slide with his hips that reminds John of a particularly raunchy strip club in Berlin, and John’s entire body goes rigid.

“Again,” John says. His voice is nearly unrecognizable.

This time Sherlock clenches around him while he does it, and it’s not a Frisbee. It’s a fucking nuclear detonation.

When he comes back into his body, John swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He’s drooled a little. He’s not dead. He’s drenched in sweat, shaking from head to toe, and not sure of his own name.

He’s sure of one thing, though. “You just postponed solving a case to finish me off.”

Sherlock’s already on his feet, stuffing his shirt tails into his miraculously uncreased trousers. “Seven minutes to curtain. Come on, John!”


	5. Let The Rain Come Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let the rain of what I feel right now, come down  
> Let the rain come down  
> Blue October — Into the Ocean

Harrow. Come at once. - SH  
  
John splashes through puddles, down an unremarkable driveway, along an equally unremarkable street. His jeans are soaked to his calves, and he can barely see through the driving rain. When he gets to the right metal shack, he unlocks the door and finds Sherlock sprawled on his back on a cot John knows from camp life in Afghanistan. They’re narrow and uncomfortable, but you can fit two people in one of those cots if you’re determined and you don’t mind a rail in your back.

“What have you been up to?” John says as he furls his umbrella.

The rain on the tin roof drowns his words, and Sherlock doesn’t move. He’s wearing trainers, battered cargo pants, and a grey zip-front hoodie. His curls are responding as predicted to the humidity; the lack of styling is as effective a disguise for Sherlock as a dress. The look is somewhere between uni student and trendy film director, or maybe that American who started Facebook and is worth about a gazillion pounds but cannot be arsed to wear anything other than jeans and sweatshirts. Sherlock looks young, brilliant, and exhausted.

John steps closer to the cot to study the bruises under Sherlock’s eyes. Late nights. He looks twenty but he’s closing in on forty. “You mad git,” John mutters.

He toes off his shoes and crawls along the edge of the cot closest to the shed’s metal wall, taking care not to knee Sherlock in the bollocks as he slots himself into what little space is left. Sherlock grumbles in his sleep but shifts automatically to his side, and John finds there’s just enough room between Sherlock’s torso and the cot’s rail to tuck himself in. His leg slides between Sherlock’s, their feet tangle together, then John folds his arm under his head for a pillow — Sherlock has a towel bunched under his head — and closes his eyes. The rain is trying to tell him something he can’t quite make out, and eventually the rivulets coursing down the corrugated metal carry him away.  

When he wakes up, Sherlock is studying him. “You came.”

It hurts that Sherlock doesn’t understand that the only time John won’t come is if he’s incapacitated, or dead. He settles for the obvious, knowing Sherlock won’t believe him. “Always.”

The word melds into the tin roof patter, and, like learning a foreign language, the rain’s meaning becomes clear.

“What were you up to?” John says.

“Infiltrating Occupy London protestors. Kiss me.”

“I shouldn’t,” John says. “You look about twelve.”

One corner of Sherlock’s mouth lifts. “I’m not about twelve.” Still, he shucks the hoodie and reveals a thin grey t-shirt that could have been painted on his muscled torso. “Better?”

Yes. Today the role of Sherlock Holmes will be played by a man who looks like one of the silent, deadly contractors in Afghanistan, and John’s once again shelter from the storm. “You must want that kiss.”

“Quite badly,” Sherlock says.

John gives him what he wants, brushing his lips over Sherlock’s before licking into his mouth. He twines his arm around Sherlock’s waist, while Sherlock flattens a hand between John’s shoulder blades and his long leg drapes over John’s thigh. In the end, all they do is unfasten each other’s zips, expose their cocks and bellies, and grind while they kiss. Sherlock’s mouth is open when he comes, silent and shuddering. The scent of rain and semen wraps around them in the humid air. It’s clean and sweet, somehow.  

“What’s on, then?” John asks after they clean up.

“Nothing,” Sherlock mumbles. “Arrests a few hours ago. Pipe bombs located. Too tired to go home. Wanted you here.”

No teasing today. Just one exhausted consulting detective, and a rain that all but demands they stay entwined on the cot. John snags Sherlock’s hoodie and drapes it over their upper bodies. “Go back to sleep, love,” John says.

The rain once again absorbs his voice. They’ve nowhere to be, nothing to do, and Sherlock needs the rest. His eyelids flicker once, then his angular face relaxes.

“Love,” John whispers again, because he can. Because it’s what the rain is saying, and right now he’s talking to the rain. Then he closes his eyes, too.


	6. Love, Interrupted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John sets aside his worries and focuses on conducting light so Sherlock can process and deduce as if he’s exactly the same.  
> And yet he’s completely different.  
> Today the role of Sherlock Holmes is being played by a stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Kres and JustGot1, poignantly. ;) Mwah, ladies.

_**Baker Street.**_  
  
Flight delayed. - SH  
ETA? JW  
? - SH  
  
John turns out the lights in the sitting room and walks down the hall to Sherlock’s bedroom. Sometimes they share Sherlock’s bed, sometimes they sleep apart, but when Sherlock’s gone on some mysterious mission for Mycroft, John sleeps in his bed. It’s sentimental, but Sherlock never comments on it. The linen smells like Sherlock’s shampoo and skin, and the room retains some of Sherlock’s stillness, so John rarely has nightmares there. After the dismaying text, John changes into a t-shirt and cotton shorts, then burrows into Sherlock’s covers and breathes in his scent until sleep takes him.

Hours later he awakens to Sherlock sitting in the chair under the window.

“Hello,” John says sleepily. He rolls to his side and studies Sherlock. Dark grey tailored shirt and trousers gilded by the pale grey London dawn. He has his elbows braced on his knees, and John can’t tell if he’s been watching John sleep for hours, or seconds. The radar that used to wake him at the slightest sound doesn’t go off for Sherlock anymore. “Been home long?”

“Not long.”

During a silence John can’t interpret, he runs through a wild range of possible thoughts occupying Sherlock’s mind: he’s bothered by John sleeping in his bed when he’s gone; he’s killed someone; he’s annoyed at the airline industry for its inefficiency and tedious security regulations; someone tried to kill him; he wants John to get up and make tea.

But the look on Sherlock’s face isn’t annoyed or afraid or victorious or thirsty. It's a look of quiet desperation, one John’s never seen before.

“Come to bed,” John says at the same time Sherlock says, “John, I — .”

“Sorry, go ahead,” John says.

“It will keep,” Sherlock says quietly.

He crawls onto the bed fully dressed but doesn’t stay that way for long. Braced on palms and knees he looms over John, dipping down to kiss him while he unbuttons Sherlock’s shirt and cuffs, then eases the fabric from his shoulders. Sherlock strips John’s RAMC T-shirt over his head, and groans softly when their skin touches. Sherlock licks into John’s mouth as he toys with the elastic edge of John’s cotton shorts. John strokes his back from shoulder blades to the fine wool of his waistband, then trails his fingers back up his spine to his hair, over and over again. The touch seems to soothe Sherlock, because he relaxes until John bears the full weight of him, not inconsiderable for as lean as he is. John can’t breathe, but that could be the kissing, or the weight, or the sense that Sherlock’s mouth is telling a story in a language John doesn’t understand.

So he kisses Sherlock, strokes him, and helps him out of his trousers and pants. Sherlock braces himself on one elbow beside John, lubes his fingers, and coaxes his way into John’s arse. John can’t remember a time when Sherlock’s taken this long to open him, prepare him, ease him into pleasure. He wants to tell Sherlock he understands, but he’s never lied to Sherlock, and anyway, the words, bottled up in his throat with his breath, won’t come.

Sherlock ghosts two long fingers over John’s prostate. “I want to be inside you.”

“Yes. God, yes.”

Sherlock slicks his cock, then presses into John. He’s open just enough to admit Sherlock, and as Sherlock glides deep, John grips the sheets, widens his legs. The move makes him feel more vulnerable even as pleasure pulses up his spine to the base of his skull.  
Sherlock guides John’s hand to his own cock and whispers, “Slow.”

It’s good, but John can’t get lost in it. His radar might allow Sherlock to slip in without waking him, but John’s awake now, aware now, every sense alive, and something’s changed.

With a low little growl, Sherlock nuzzles into John’s neck.

“Just tell me,” John whispers. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”

Sherlock stops moving. His skin is slick with sweat, his hair damp, his eyes dark, terrifying in a way that manic Sherlock or cocktease Sherlock or demanding Sherlock or bleeding Sherlock never is. John sees him struggling and reaches up to stroke the hair at Sherlock’s temple.

“John, I — .”

Sherlock’s phone rings, actually rings. Not a chime for a text, or a vibration for a reminder. An actual ring.

“Ignore it,” John says.

Sherlock bows his head and breathes in uneven inhales and exhales until the ringing stops.

“Go on,” says John. “I’m listening.”

Another inhale. His skin is cooling, and John fears his need to tell whatever happened in Brussels is receding with the broken spell. John’s military-trained brain spins up possibilities: Sherlock’s had to kill someone this time, something he’s never done before, or his disguises failed and he’s now being targeted by terrorists or snipers and this is his last goodbye before he — .

“Yes. John, I — .”

John’s mobile blares the theme to Life on Mars into the still air of the bedroom. “God-fucking-dammit. That’s Greg.”

Sherlock nods, and John answers the phone with, "Not a good time, Greg. Yes, he’s just back. He’s right here.”

He passes the phone up to Sherlock, who is still firmly inside John. “Yes?”

Greg’s voice sounds tired but exhilarated. John catches phrases, not full sentences. He’s too worried to try and piece them together, just watches fragments of emotion flit through Sherlock’s pale eyes.

“Yes, we’ll meet you there.” Sherlock disconnects the call. “Double murder in Hampstead,” he says, and pulls out.

John feels the emptiness inside him like a physical ache. Without a word he takes the stairs to his room two at a time and gets dressed.

 

Greg apologizes for dragging them out of bed at the crack of dawn with bad coffee. John takes Sherlock a cup. Sherlock’s hair as he works the scene is a wild, tumbled mess. He’s markedly less disdainful, quiet, introspective, like someone dialed down his voice and mannerisms several notches. John cannot begin to imagine what phenomenon could so completely reorder Sherlock’s world.

“All right, then?” John asks under his breath and he holds out one of the takeaway cups. He interprets the humming noise concurrent with the shake of Sherlock’s head to mean that yes, he’s all right and no, he doesn’t want coffee. Sherlock goes back to sorting through the wife’s handbag, so John drinks both. He sets aside his worries and focuses on conducting light so Sherlock can process and deduce and solve as if he’s exactly the same.

And yet he’s completely different.

Today the role of Sherlock Holmes is being played by a stranger.

 

Hours later they return to the flat. The light’s aged to a dull metal grey now, lying over the flat’s furniture like a shroud. John goes into the kitchen to make tea, but Sherlock stops him with a hand on his wrist. “Come back to bed.”

John expects the intensity to have faded, but it hasn’t, and a palpable frustration seeps from Sherlock, as if he wants something he can see and touch and smell but can’t find a way to ask for. John holds him, strokes him, kisses him, and gives him the gift of his honest response.

When he comes, it feels like a failure.

 

After, John goes into the bathroom to clean up, and splash some water on his face. John conducts light, but Sherlock refracts it. John’s always been able to follow the angles, identify the role, but this case didn’t bring clarity back into place, nor did the sex.

Something has happened. John will have to ask him, point-blank. Whatever it is, they’ll face it together.  

“What happened in Brussels?” he says as he walks through the doorway.

He stops.

Sherlock’s sitting cross-legged in the wrecked bedclothes. He’s wearing his pyjama bottoms, T-shirt, and robe, and has his back to the wall. He’s looking down at a small dark blue leather box trimmed with gold that rests in his cupped hands.

Wrong question. John tries again. “What’s that?”

Wordlessly, Sherlock lifts his gaze and offers the box to him.

John blinks and takes it. It looks like a ring box but it can’t possibly be a ring box. He opens the lid. Inside is a simple band of gleaming platinum.

It’s a ring box.

With a ring in it.

He looks up at Sherlock. His eyes are slightly wider, and he’s not blinking as he holds himself quite still and watches John. John recognizes the expression on his face for what it isn’t: it’s not a disguise, not a pose, not a cloak, not a shield.

Today the role of Sherlock Holmes is being played by Sherlock Holmes.

John stares into Sherlock’s eyes, such a pale blue they glint silver in the dull light. He can’t speak. He looks at the ring, then back at Sherlock, and every word, every stroke, every kiss, every glance over the last twelve hours crystalizes into _context_.

“It is my hope that symbols are the best method of communicating emotion,” Sherlock says. “I didn’t know how else to say what you’d already said.”

John struggles to remember what he said.

Sherlock’s brows lift ever so slightly. Uncertain, not arrogant. “You said _mine_ , in Chelsea. You said _love_ , in Harrow, in the rain.”

Two words. Sherlock spun this out of two single syllable words, and everything John felt but wouldn’t allow himself to say. God. He’s incredible. “I thought you were asleep,” John says rather stupidly.

Without moving so much as a millimetre, Sherlock draws a veil of proud aloofness over his features. It’s as wrong as shuttering a window on the moon. “Forgive me,” he says formally, and reaches for the box. “I’ve misunderstood — .”

John snaps the box shut and clutches it to his chest. “Nothing. You’ve misunderstood nothing.” He clambers onto the bed and straddles Sherlock’s legs. “Christ, I’m making a right mess of this. Sherlock. You’ve misunderstood _nothing_.”

The veil lifts again to reveal something that in a lesser man would be profound relief. His hands cup John’s, then ease his fingers apart so the ring box rests in John’s palm. Sherlock lifts the box, opens it again, then turns it to face John.

“I’ll buy one for you,” John says. “If you’ll wear one.”

Sherlock nods. “It is customary for partners to exchange rings.”

“Matching?”

“I rather thought…of course I’ll wear whatever you choose, but I rather thought I’d like mine to be gold.”

John blinks again. Sherlock’s thought about this. Extensively. “Of course. Absolutely. Why?”

Sherlock reaches up and runs his hands through John’s hair, then cups the back of his head. “It will remind me of you.”

John looks at his ring, thinks about sunlight and moonlight, gold and silver, symbols and single syllable words. He shakes his head. “I’ll never get to the end of you.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot,” Sherlock says. He draws John’s forehead down to his. “Mine,” he murmurs. “Mine.”

“Yours,” John says. “But let’s skip the announcement in the Sunday _Times_.”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth lifts, creasing his cheek, wrinkling the skin around his bright eyes. One hand drops to John’s nape. “That suits me just fine.”

 

 

FIN


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